My Rants: Dragon Age Origins

This game hits the Roleplaying Video Game Nail right in the fucking head for me when I first got it and played it. Where do I even begin on this glorious masterpiece. The characters, the lore, world, the races, so many things to cover here. This game series is my favorite game series of all time but I have to give props to the original that is Dragon Age Origins and Dragon Age Origins: Awakening. So before I start this I need to put this rant in a categories list, why? Because if I were to make a whole rant on this I'll be here forever gushing about how amazing this game is. So with categories I'll be able to point out the best parts of the game and the bad parts of the game. So lets begin shall we?

First, lets talk about the lore behind this game first. Well the lore that explains a bit of how the gameplay starts. You see, many years ago there was a group of the most powerful magister lords of a culture known as the Tevinter that opened a gate into the Golden City with the forbidden arts known as Blood Magic and entered the realm. But unfortunately things turned for the worse as once they stepped in the city turned black and the mages came back as corrupted hideious monsters known as the Darkspawn where they dwell underground in search for the Old Gods and corrupting them into creatures known as an Archdemon who takes strategic control of the Darkspawn and tries to kill everything in sight with its army of monsters in which is called a Blight.

Many years later after four Blights have emerged and defeated, a Fifth Blight started to rise from the shadows and it's up to a grand order of fighters known as the Grey Wardens to stop the Blight and defeat the dreaded Archdemon. So how cool is that, killing an Old God, fighting hordes of murderous monsters, and save the world. Even better, in this game your choices is what happens in the final battle of the game which is pretty cool, that you feel this sort of great impact on the choices you make whether it be good or bad. You're sometimes rewarded and sometimes punished but at the end of it all you are left with what you got and proceed onto the final battle.

Now before the game beings the game lets you create your own character which all RPG's follow. There are three major races of the world. The Humans who can play as a Human Noble where you are a Noble of an important family of the lands capital, there's the Elf  to where you can play as a Dailish Elf who are fierce hunters who keeps their old elven traditions or a City elf who lives in the life of squaller in the dumps of the capital. Finally there's the Dwarf who can play as a Dwarf Noble who is part of a royal Dwarven family or a Dwarf Commoner where your life is reduced to a life of petty crime in the sqaller of the Dwarven culture.

But no RPG is complete without the three main classes, the Warrior, the Rouge, and my favorite the Mage. Now unlike the first two classes, the Mage class can have quite the impact on the story, they even have their own origin if you play as a Mage when you are a student in a guild known as the Circle of Magi. But sadly, Dwarves cant be mages so sorry guys, Humans and Elves are allowed to have wicked awesome magic powers. Speaking of powers, the Mage class has quite the potential when it comes to magic. As a mage you have several Schools of Magic that branches out that within time you will become quite the powerful magi.

There's the School of Arcane to where it branches to Mastery which is your basic magic branch, Attunement that improves your spells offensively or defencively, and Field that creates barriers and shields to defend yourself from enemies. There's also the School of Primal that follows the four main elements; Fire, Eath, Cold, and Lightning. There's the School of Creation that will help you heal, enchance your parties stats, glyphs that stuns your enemies, and summoning to help you in battle. The School of Spirit helps you with fending off magic spells, using your own mana as a way of offence, necromancy, and telekinesis. Finally there's the School of Entropy that involves making your enemies weaker and sufferer from stat debuffs, attack sleeping targets more better and drain their health, mana, and stamina.

There's also specializaions to where you can learn throughout the game if you have the money, time, or choice that you made. The first specialization for mages is the Arcane Warrior which really helps out in the long run. If you have this, you'll be dealing with mages wearing suits of heavy armor! There's the Blood Mage which I advise not to do because it impacts on the story if you want to be good and is not much of a good specialization since it uses your health instead of mana. There's the Shapeshifter to where you can transform into a giant spider, a bear, a swarm of insects, or their demon counterparts. The spirit healer helps in reviving, healing and curing your party and they are crucial to when fighting tough bosses. The Battlemage which focuses of improving stats, mana draining and using spell combinations such as Fire and Cold. Finally the Keeper which focuses on using the forces of Nature itself to fight off the horde of monsters you defeat. There's also another specialization called the Power of Blood but we'll get to that later.

So once you complete your origin story, you become one of the Grey Wardens after completing a secret yet ancient ritual done by every volunteer of the Grey Wardens. After the ritual you must fight by the King of the land's side and light up the tower to signal the elite of the elite lead by a man named Logain. After climing up the tower and lighting it up, Logain and his men fall back and let both the King and whats left of the Grey Wardens of the land die in the battlefield.

So it is up to you to gather up an army to face off the Archdemon and stop the Blight one more time to save the world. Now the adventure starts as you are now given the option to go to where ever you may please. Now in order to get through the game with ease you need to do the following things. First you need to head to Redcliff, then head to the Circle of Magi and do their quest, after you recruit the mages from Circle of Magi come back to Redcliff and finish off the quests there, then head to Orzammar and side with Harrowmont for he's the good guy and he's awesome. After completing Orzammar go to the forest and finish the quest for the Dalish Elves, go to the capital and continue your adventure there.

Now I'm just gonna brag here but in this game I'm an Elf Mage with a relationship with Morrigan, best friends with all my party members especially with Alistar becase he is so fucking awesome! Got my party to their highest of level, did all the good deeds in the game, and spoiler alert (SURVIVED THE BATTLE OF THE ARCHDEMON: Hey I may be good but I also want to live, I aint putting my relationship with Morrigan go to waste.) So anywho the characters of the game is quite fascinating. There's of course Alistar who is the royal bastard child, heir to the throne, and Grey Warden. And my god, this guy is awesome, he's funny, he's charming, he's a good guy to be a friend to, if he was real he would be one of best of best friends man.

There's also Morrigan who is a daughter of the legendary Witch of the Wilds and the main lover of the game. Though you dont really have to love her, she is basically the main love interest of the game and when you reach the end of the game you'll understand why. And sometimes I can relate with her, the only parent she had is pretty abusive and uses her, and even with a kind smile she uses Morrigan to take care of her. Yeah that's basically me right there when I first played this game. There's also other characters as well that are also relatable and understanding like Wynne the motherly Spirit Healer, Oghren the funny drunk Dwarf Berserker, Leliana a Rouge Bard, Shale the Golem, and Zevrean Arainai the Antivian or Desert Elf assassin. However there is one character that rather ticks me off not just as a character but as a species in whole. Sten, the Qunari warrior.

Now I've seen wooden people, and I've also seen wood, but everytime I talk to this guy I feel like I'm talking to an ignorant robot writting on a chalk board. He is literal to the point, he is doesnt mess around, he has no time for relationships or anything, the only thing on his mind is to be used as a weapon which I tend to do because lets face it the only thing good about him is that he's a "heavy hitter" in the game meaning he will rack up damage the more times you use him. Then again Shale is a more better heavy hitter so what the fuck is the point of keeping him, atleast Shale has more personality than this Wonder Bread. Though I do say the only thing that is close to a personallity I think I can relate to, is that he likes cookies.

So after gathering your army and temperarly brought peace to the land it's time to face the Archdemon where you must go out and slay it. What's the Archdemon, it's a giant fucking demonic dragon! Yeah, if that aint fucking cool then I dont know what is. Apparently the Old Gods were powerful dragons and when corrupted they turned into more demonic forms, this one being the Dragon of Beauty, yeah define beauty in this creature. Anyways after slaying the beast you beat the game and everyone cheers for your victory and depending on your choices you either died heroicly or became the first Grey Warden to survive after defeating the Archdemon.

But wait folks, there's more. Tons more infact, DLC bitches! The most famous of the two is infact the Awakening DLC which continues the story as you being the new Warden Commander of the land, own a place known as Vigils Keep, aid a city, and defeat a new force that is controlling the Darkspawn once more. The other DLC is that of Witch Hunt to where you must find Morrigan and figure out her plans. There's other DLC such as one where you play a spin off playing as one of the Darkspawn and you must kill the people of the capitol and make the Archdemon win the battle, then there's the one that follows Leliana backstory to where she was a rouge, another that lets you go back to where everything started, and finally one where you must aid a man clear his family name where you get the new skill Power of Blood.

What I sudgest, first do Shale's DLC to where you get a golem companion and complete Shale's quests. Then, aid the man to clearing his name because that's where you'll get some Warden Commander gear for your character and look like a true badass Grey Warden in defeating the Archdemon, and finally Awakening and Witch Hunt. There you will get the full gest of the story, meet some good characters along the way, fight your enemies with ease and enjoy this one of a kind game.